


Days gone by

by Kujaku



Category: Les Miserables
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, Immortality, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4422029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kujaku/pseuds/Kujaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't so much the dying that still woke him up screaming in the middle of the night. It was what had come after that, when he'd woken up in the morgue of the hôtel de police the day after they'd torn down the barricade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Days gone by

He kept a small notebook through all the years after that first time, just so he could remind himself that it was real. He hadn't dreamt it, it wasn't a product of his wild imagination, his deepest desires or the hazy remains of the last bottle he'd had before bed. It was all real.

The first time still stung the worst.

(wasn't that just fucking ironic in itself?)

No matter how he'd tried to forget a whole bunch of things, they just kept coming back. Like the first time he'd seen his Apollo. It was etched into his mind like diamond scratching glass; a fearless blond angel in red, an avenging messenger of death, desire and revolution, urging on change. Even after so long, Grantaire remembered each and every minute detail of the face that haunted his dreams and nightmares. The way his tousled hair had fallen over his eyes when he was excited; the vibrations in his voice and the light in his eyes when he had spoken of his ideas; that little smirk, hardly visible, when everything had gone his way... No. He'd never been cold marble. Enjolras had been anything but cold, no matter what false impressions Grantaire had had. Unfortunately, it was only at this point, when everything was too late that he realized this.

The first time he'd realized his true feelings for the leader in red, it was after a particularly intense debate (or what the others called a blazing argument) Enjolras, incensed, had grabbed him by his shirt collar and had pushed him against the café's wall, demanding to know the reason he even bothered to show up at the meetings, when obviously he didn't give a single shit about their cause. And Grantaire had almost, _almost_ let his mouth run away with his brain, and had almost answered "for you". He had thought it so loudly that every one of the Amis should have heard, but none did. So what if Enjolras had disdained him even more from that day onwards? At least the pain of being considered useless was less than if he'd been rejected and loathed for his very being.

The first time he'd died, that time he'd died with them all, in that writhing, agonizing mess that had become the barricades, the revolution, their ideas and their hopes... Well, that was the stuff of nightmares even now.

*

 It wasn't so much the dying that still woke him up screaming in the middle of the night. It was what had come after that, when he'd woken up in the morgue of the _hôtel de police_ the day after they'd torn down the barricade. It stank. That alone could have made him sick, the smell of cold, congealed blood, of singed hair and clothes, and the sickly-sweet odour of death. And around him were eight still and silent slabs with eight still and silent bodies.

He wasn't able to look at them for a long time, didn't want to believe they were truely gone. Just a few hours ago they'd all been alive, breathing, laughing and drinking together. And now this...

After what seemed forever, Grantaire stood up off the slab he'd been laid out on, grabbed his clothes...and paused. He couldn't leave like this, why was he even pretending this time? No-one was left to look at him, or to judge him, if they'd even wanted to. He could do nothing more for his friends. He could only look at them one last time and kiss them on the cheek; he was still too chilled and shocked to realise exactly what had happened, how he was alive and they were dead. He was certain they could just wake up, that if he pleaded enough they would open their eyes and mutter something about a very bad hangover.

But that was his heart speaking, and his heart always made bad decisions... Finally he came to the last table and paused, incapable of taking another step forward. Enjolras was exactly as he'd been the last time he'd seen him, before the bullets had let fly and had struck him against the wall. Il was still like gazing upon the face of an angel, even with the blood still caking the beautiful golden curls...

A noise in the corridor startled him out of his thoughts. He was in the _hôtel de police_ , at any moment inspectors could come in and find him, the people come to recognize the bodies

(how that hurt just to put into thought)

could see him and call for help... _Javert_ could come, even, and even if Grantaire doubted that no-one would care enough about him to try and kill him a second time, and even if he really didn't find it in him to care if they did, he had to leave. His last seconds were spent pressing his lips to Enjolras' brow, even now he couldn't imagine stealing a kiss, before running off down the corridors, a small bundle under his arm.

*

That bundle was still with him. It went with him all the time, every time he took the _métro_ to wander the streets of Paris, looking for his next drink or his next roof. He hadn't been able to get rid of it, he'd kept it for two hundred years next to him, even if he'd wanted to get rid of it at times. Wanted to throw it, and himself, into the Seine and just sleep forever. But he couldn't die. He'd tried and failed too many times over the years.

Grantaire had never believed in reincarnation, or fate. But after a lifetime of walking around Paris, just walking to try and figure everything and anything out, he'd heard a laugh and he'd just...frozen. That laugh was one he'd not heard in years and it was all he could do to not run straight towards the sound and take it's owner in his arms. But he controled himself. That man wasn't Courfeyrac and he knew it. He was such an idiot to think that he'd blindly stumble onto them once more. Still, he kept hoping, he who had been so adverse to hope. He kept believing, he who'd never found anything worth believing in save his glass. And if his friends ever came back, it would be to Paris. Their very souls were bound to the paved streets where their blood had pooled, and Grantaire had made St Michel his haunting ground.

He'd seen the Musain restored to something of it's former glory but he'd never once gone back inside. Marius had returned then, bandaged and limping but so alive; Grantaire had simply watched from the shadows as the young man walked up to the back-room, on the arm of the stunningly beautiful lady who could only be his Cosette. And from what he'd learnt, their fearless Eponine had been Cosette's sister. A lot of bad blood had separated the two, but Cosette had come to pray for her sister's memory and her soul's rest. As if death could wipe away all the bad and leave only good. How he wished he could have died, if only to be someone's good memory. But he wasn't even worth that, it seemed. After his escape from the police morgue, he had stayed close, lost and completely terrified, waiting to see what was going to happen after. He'd stayed long enough to see his friends' bodies claimed by those who cherished them, but refused to come out into the open. What could he had said? What could he have done to mend anything? So he'd watched , unseen and unbidden, and saw the hearses come and take his friends away. Save for poor Feuilly.

No-one had come for him and after a week had passed, his body had been thrown into a mass grave without even a word. Grantaire had watched and at nightfall, when the graveyard was empty, he had sat on the side of the freshly-dug ground and had poured a whole bottle of absinth on the earth. It wasn't a lot, but it was hopefully enough to ease Feuilly's lonely soul. Grantaire would remember him, even if no-one else would. God, it was all he could do, think of them on lonely nights in his nondescript lodgings, with an empty bottle as a candle-holder and another bottle as a nightcap. He'd tried to stop drinking, he really had, but what was the point? Being sober hurt so fucking much, he couldn't stand it. Being sober had made the nightmares more vivid, and the days colder and more grey. Being sober meant he could take ridiculous decisions and blame them on his useless heart.

*

The first time he'd tried killing himself was the day Marius was buried. It was a horribly sunny spring morning when he'd found himself walking along the banks of the Seine; he'd run back there after the funeral, leaving the shadows outside the church (he hadn't put one foot into the building, he would never forgive a god that could play such a cruel game with dead hearts) and he couldn't do anything else but cry and retch, curled up on himself on the _Pont des Arts_. If passers-by wondered at the strange man who cried like a child on his knees, no-one said anything. No-one cared anyway. Paris had become come and bleak without anyone around him. But perversely, he didn't want anyone anymore? He didn't want new friends, new interests...new anything. Nothing mattered to him now that Marius, the last of the ill-fated barricade boys was gone. Maybe this time he could do it. Maybe this time Hades would accept his passage into the underworld, maybe he would accept a soul as worthless and rotting as his. 

The water was freezing and hit him like a well-aimed punch. It was a welcome pain that held promises of pure oblivion after nearly fifty years of wandering. Still clutching the bundle he kept in his pocket, Grantaire breathed in deeply. He felt the water rush into his lungs, his head was spinning and his throat was burning. But still he breathed, willing it just to end. The last thing he remembered was seeing the sun shine through the murky water and he could almost feel the warmth he missed so much touch his cheek. With a smile, he closed his eyes... 

When he woke up spitting and vomiting water it was pitch-black and he was freezing, lying face-up in a rancid part of the river. His first thought, a split second before vomiting again, was that someone had dragged him out of the water, but no. No-one cared. 

He'd died, he could remember that choking, stinging darkness...and he'd come back. Again. Hades didn't want him, after all. So he'd remained, a shadow amongst all the other shadows. But when the monarchy had finally crumbled, he'd walked and cheered and celebrated with strangers who had embraced and called each-other brother and sister. They'd kissed and cried and laughed together in the streets of Paris, and Grantaire had promised that he'd live for them all. 

He'd come to realise that he truely didn't want to die. He wanted to live, for them all. When the new electric lightbulbs on the Eiffel tower winked in and out to celebrate the new century, he was there, his eyes unreadable in the exploding lights as he watched hopes soar for a new modern age. And if he thought he saw familiar faces in the crowd, if he sometimes let his imagination run away with him, he didn't find it in him to stop it this time. He thought he glimpsed them all, heard their voices, felt their hands take his. He thought he heard them wish him a merry new year, wish him all the happiness in the world, and tears choked him at last. But those would be the last, he promised. The twentieth century was here, perhaps it would bring him a bit of peace. So, as the night faded into grey, weak light, he decided he would live. He would live for eight and nothing would stop him. 

* 

He took up painting again, taking up residence along the bank of the Seine. It wasn't a huge change, he'd never had much money before, and poverty was one of the things he knew how to take in his stride. And poverty hadn't changed in the new century, at least. So what if all he owned was a pair of trousers, two shirts and his shoes, and a (stolen) green coat that was several sizes too big for him? He'd finally made a bit of peace with himself and his fucked-up eternal existence. His paintings didn't make him an overnight celebrity, but they did all he needed them to. The few coins he hoarded every week paied for a miserable room where he hardly slept anyway, the supplies he used, and enough cheap alcohol to gloss over the actual lack of food. 

Could he even starve to death? He didn't really want to find out, not anymore. 

He'd promised he'd live, so he did everything and anything to keep his promise. No-one would ever be able to say that Grantaire didn't keep his promises. When he had the money he went to museums and exhibitions; he dug up old books in one-franc bins and started re-learn his Greek and Latin. Alleyways and the smokey back-rooms of less high-class cafés provided opponents for flexing muscles he'd left aside for too long. More often than not he left the illegal fights with bloody hands and broken bones, but with a deep feeling of peace and a few more coins in his pocket. Some of those coins were usually spent just after, as he toasted Bahorel's spirit, thanking him for those great fights they's had, and reminding him to watch because the next fight would be so much better. 

He lived for them, just as he'd promised. He tried writing, putting to paper all the words he hadn't had time to say; his stories and poems always had the same names in the epistle, with special mention to Jehan, who had been a true magician with words. His words didn't sell better than his paintings, but he survived. 

His first tattoo came not too long after the end of the first world war. As a shade without a registered and official life, he hadn't been called to fight. (He wasn't even sure he'd have gone, he'd seen too cruelly what fighting for a cause had given him and others...those empty chairs and empty tables killed him every night) He watched the homecoming soldiers amid cries and shouts of victory, and the words were thrown around again and again : they were free from those who would have conquered them. 

Free, like Combeferre had wished it so badly. Freedom had been his fondest wish, his dying wish, so with that idea in mind, Grantaire had sought out a decent tattoo artist (not that they were called that in those days...) and asked for it to be inked into his skin. Of course that only led to finishing the whole thing and two hours and all his current savings later, he'd walked out with the words _liberté, égalité_ , _fraternité_ forever on his ribs. The freedom that had been Combeferre's wish, the equality that Enjolras had fought for with such passion, and the brotherhood that had animated Courfeyrac until the end. 

That, logically, led him to seek out new artists and new designs. The pain was always welcome, a reminder of his existance, and without him being a masochist (although he had wondered about that from time to time) he'd begun to understand it; he need the pain to feel grounded and alive. It was a rapidly-freezing winter morning when he left another tattoo parlour with his next one : a simple "R" in cursive script, the ink hiding as well as it could the scars on his left wrist. Scars of a past life, of unpleasent memories, of failures and disappointed parents. He'd known from long ago that he wasn't going to be who they wanted him to be. He'd made his choice but now it was written on him for ever. 

This was who he was. 

R. 

Next came a shy pink and red Sweet William flower, creeping up his neck like a caress. Since the arrival of Japonism in Europe and especially in France, a whole new interest had sparked in the different ways art could be expressed; all artists wanted to try their hand at the exotic touch, and tattooists were no different. The fragility of the pinks and red, the delicate shading, the graceful lines...it just screamed Prouvaire's name at him. And how fitting it was that Sweet William was also known as the poet's flower. Sweet Jehan with his flaming hair and innocent eyes, who had only seen beauty in the world... The world hadn't deserved him, not after taking him away in such a fashion. 

* 

The shadows of the years increased and so did the canvas that had become his body. Children gaped openly at the flower on his neck, and adults did the same thing when he painted or just slept on the riverbank, his shirt off to warm himself under the sun. Sometimes he flattered his ego by telling himself that it wasn't the tattoos that they looked at, but at him, at his body, the body that was full of imperfections and scars, and that striking red mark just above his heart where the bullet had killed him. 

But his fantasies lasted just for a little while, just until their eyes reached his face and filled with disgust and pity. He knew he was ugly, with his sunken eyes, broken nose and scraggly beard that never seemed to amount to anything, no matter what he did. But he was able to see beyond those looks of revulsion. He'd known friendship that hadn't stopped for a second to consider his face... Joly and Bossuet had been the first of those friends. And their tattoos were almost the easiest to come up with, their symbols so obvious that they'd both have simply groaned. 

A simple four-leafed clover, green as the ink could get, took up all the back of his right hand. It was a small tribute and a wink to the man who'd claimed to be the unluckiest in France. Bad luck had been his mistress, and each knock of fate had been met with a smile and good humour. Grantaire had admired him so much, and was so happy to have spent such time with Bossuet (it was a nickname, he knew, but it had stuck through so many years... Calling him Lesgles was just too strange...) That tattoo was hardly healed when the next one was started, eating up the rent for that month. A gorgeous rod of Ascleipios soon nestled up the side of his left arm. Joly would have approved of the choice; he'd always nitpicked about the caduceus not being the proper symbol, and he'd had been able to go on for hours on that one subject, eyes lit up and feverish. How he'd been gorgeous when he'd been passionate... (and yes, he felt no shame in thinking of his friends in such terms, they'd all been beautiful, they'd all been his loves for that short space of time.) 

The Second World War started and ended, and the less he thought about it, the happier he was. He'd seen death again, seen it in so many forms, lying in the street or running away screaming. He'd hidden and he had watched and waited, but no matter what, he'd never thought about leaving Paris. And the soldiers didn't take notice of one more starving artist still painting and ignoring the world. One of them even bought a painting, one of Grantaire's numerous blonde angels; the young soldier had looked at it for a long while, almost transfixed, and Grantaire had glanced away, unable to stand the love shining in the young man's eyes. He probably had his own Apollo somewhere in the world... Maybe they'd parted without a word before the war and now were just waiting to see each-other again again. Maybe they'd never spoken, their love a secret that didn't dare to bloom in daylight. Or maybe that young soldier's love was lying somewhere in the cold, shot through the heart, never to return. Just like his own love. 

He got his last tattoos almost exactly a year after the Allied victory, not through any patriotic reason, but because he'd only managed to save up enough for them. No-one had money after the war, and even less to give to beggars, street artists and others of that ilk. And even if he couldn't die, he still needed to eat, so Grantaire had to turn to a less savoury way of not starving to death. He'd sold himself a few times over the long, long years, but never for more than a night at a time; usually it was for a bottle on those nights when he couldn't stand the idea of walking back to his dingy hovel sober. And then he'd given up the idea of a permanent home when the economy crashed, and moved from bridge to doorway, quite happy to just be out of the rain and snow. He'd given up actually owning anything that wasn't his painting supplies, a change of clothes, and the metal box that contained his universe : that bloodstained red vest and all the money he had to his name. 

He had thought he'd given up his pride a long, long time ago, but when he'd led the stranger into a dark alley, the first time in years, he realized he was still hanging onto a last shred of dignity. He needed to eat, he was going to survive and he'd promised to live for them, but that didn't take the pain away. He gave up counting how many people bought him and used him, and only thought about the money he was painstakingly saving up. 

And a year after the end of the war, he walked into one of the parlours he'd seen grow and flourish and came out with the last two tattoos on his bodily canvas. A fan, beautifuly old-school and surprisingly delicate soon graced his right shoulder, one tip on his collarbone, the other on his shoulderblade. It rested there like a caress, Poland's colours shining from it. He knew a drawing wouldn't ever do Feuilly's work justice, but he hoped his friend would see it and smile.  Bahorel's mark on him was the most complicated to imagine. There were no real pictures he could represent, nothing symbolic that he liked. Bahorel wasn't en easy person to paint, his life hadn't been in a court of law, but in the pavement and the boxing ring. His life and his soul had been in the paving stones of backroom fight clubs, and there wasn't much you could draw for that. But there was something else... Grantaire ended up with what Bahorel had taken as his motto : carved in block letters the long of his right forearm were the words "never a lawyer". Somewhere, he suspected that his friend would appreciate the symbol even more when that forearm broke noses... 

The world kept changing and still he skirted it. The student revolt of May 1968 woke something that had long lain dormant since the last time he'd stood for something. Memories stirred uneasily as he watched barricades grow once more from the parisian streets, or heard revolutionnary slogans being shouted. They weren't exactly the same as the ones he'd heard before, but they carried the same idea. And he was terrified that this revolt would end the same way as they all seemed to : in tears and blood. Instead...nothing happened. The streets fell silent, and the newest revolutionnaries disappeared back into the system. Nothing changed. 

Grantaire spent a long time thinking about what he'd seen, looking for answers in his wineglass as if he were scrying. What would theyhave become, the Friends of the ABC, if they'd won that time? If the June Rebellion (as they'd come to call it) had succeded, would they also have become jaded? Disappearing into the comfortable fabric of society, forgetting the fires and passion of their youth? The all-too-vivid memory of Marius threatening to blow their barricade up rather than surrendering was never a better testament. They would have died rather than let their ideas go to waste. And he would have died with them. 

He had. It was just a shame he hadn't stayed dead.

*

 

Still the years turned, dragging their feet or running too fast for him to count. It was a glorious summer day, the sun glinting off the metal and the glass, and the concrete beneath him. He couldn't even call this the Musain anymore, even if his heart always led him back here; the great urban renovations of the early 20th century had left their mark, and not a single original stone still stood. But it was his Musain, and he'd be damned if he abandoned it. His feet were propped up on the table in front of him and he was staring up at the blue, blue sky, a glass of beer in his hand. Off the back of the chair was hanging Enjolras' red vest, in as good a condition as possible, his tattooed body left to the admiration (or disgust, whatever) of the passers-by. The smells from the fast-food just opposite teased his appetite, and the Luxemburg gardens just across the road were full of laughter. With just a little imagination, he could almost feel two hundred years in the past... 

And then... 

He felt the presence before he even opened his eyes. The gaze on the back of his neck was almost burning and his fingers tightened around his glass. Time seemed to stop and he didn't even notice he'd stopped breathing. 

All his body tensed, as if straining towards the presence behind him. 

Everything was suddenly brighter....the sounds were clearer... More silhouettes appeared on the wall, cast by the sun's rays. He didn't dare count, he couldn't dare to hope. 

And then... 

And then...

A hand reached out and took his wrist. Slowly. Softly. And then a voice...oh...a voice... 

"Grantaire...put that bottle down..."

**Author's Note:**

> I just went and gave myself a sad with this one. I need chocolate and Ramin Karimloo stat.  
> And yes, I've probably used every tired e/R trope, but this was pure self-indulgence, so excuse me :)


End file.
